MinD - Designing for People with Dementia

WP8 Update Year 3

Semi-annual web-update – March-August 2018

The MinD project is now in the design phase and continues to disseminate its results and to reach out to other researchers, health professionals and the general public. The team is now also in the process of setting up the final conference and reaching out to the relevant parties (researchers and organisations representing people with dementia) to join in this event. The theme of the final conference is ‘Designing with and for people with dementia: Wellbeing, Empowerment and Happiness’ and the conference is organized in collaboration with the DRS Special Interest Group on Behaviour Change and the DRS Special Interest Group.

Throughout March – August 2018, work on the scientific publications (journal and conference papers) has continued. A conference paper about the co-creation tools that were developed for data collection was presented at 2018 conference of the Design Research Society in Limerick, Ireland in June. A poster submission was done for the AAL Forum (to be held 24th – 27th September 2018).

Work on several other papers has continued (three journal papers in WP3, one conference paper and two journal papers in WP2) that are expected to be submitted before the end of 2018. A journal paper on design for care environments for people with dementia (WP5) is still under review and researchers of the MinD team were invited to submit a systematic review on design of environments in demetia care to a special issue of the journal Maturitas.

The MinD newsletter is sent out periodically on the MinD public discussion list and news of the MinD project is also being published through the Alzheimer Europe’s the monthly newsletter. In May 2018 during the secondment in Nottingham there was a very successful PPI session that was set up as a first evaluation for the Social Engagement Map concept. About 8 researchers and 10 people with dementia participated in this Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) session, there was ample attention for creating common ground and understanding between the groups which worked really well.

The project website is being updated regularly with project information and updates related to the exchanges. The amount of followers on Twitter has again increased and the MinD account now has 302 followers.

During the second half of the third year, the focus has been on a a number of different outreach and publication activities:

Throughout the second half of the third year, work on the scientific publications (journal and conference papers) has continued. A poster presentation was made at the International Perspectives on Evaluation of PPI in Research Conference in Newcastle on 15 November 2018, where the MinD PPI work was presented as a case study.

The third MinD symposium “Application of mindfulness in the work with people affected by mental and neurological diseases”, held on 20 November 2018 in Valladolid, Spain, which was co-organised by MinD partner INTRAS and Universidad Europea Miguel de Cervantes (UEMC) where it was hosted. Read more about the symposium here.

The MinD conference call has gone out repeatedly during the autumn, and a good number of submissions for academic papers as well as for design proposals under the theme ‘designing with and for people with dementia’ addressing the theme from diverse perspectives where received in February 2019, and are now undergoing peer review. Three keynote speakers have also been confirmed for the conference, including Chris Roberts from the EWGPWD who will speak about his lived experience with dementia, Dr Natalie Marchant from University College London whose research focuses on psychological risk factors for dementia and behavioural interventions to reduce these risks, and Dr. Ir. Helma van den Berg-van Rijn, service designer at Muzus, focusing on social design projects and how designers can learn from direct contact with difficult-to-reach user groups. Read more about the keynote speakers.

The MinD team has also continued the work with PPI groups in the UK and Spain to develop co-design practices and inform, plan and deliver the evaluation of the design prototypes. 2 events were held each at Intras, Valladolid, Spain, and at the Institute of Mental Health, Nottingham, UK, to involve people with lived experience actively in the design and evaluation parts of the project.